To be thinking about where I want to place the sounds and how they’ll move, specifically to enhance the storytelling and physicality of my music.” And so it almost felt like a natural progression to move into this immersive format. A lot of my music is also quite centred around storytelling. “Physicality is something I’ve always strived for in my music and sound design a quality of the sounds reaching out to the listener beyond the speakers. She explains that the introductory courses shifted her perspective on thinking of track elements as objects in 3D space. “Being supported by guitars from behind, the drums punching through from all around in just the right ways, the backing vocals gently supporting and enveloping you… It definitely got me really excited about the possibilities it could open up for my music!” When I first heard Lianne La Havas’ cover of Weird Fishes though, in a 13.1 speaker array, I definitely felt the energy of the track translate in a way I hadn’t really experienced before. Mei wasn’t immediately sold: “To be honest though, when I first joined the programme, a part of me was a little sceptical about whether it’d be a gimmick. I thought joining the programme would be a great introduction to it after seeing an ad for the programme on Instagram.” “I’d heard of Dolby Atmos before, but all I knew is that it involved multiple speakers that were placed around the listener. “I honestly didn’t know much about immersive audio when I first applied,” Mei tells us. Listening party for Immersive London Calling (Image credit: ARK360) We wondered how Mei had found the experience of writing the track in immersive audio, but first we asked her what she knew about immersive formats already. Her track Worship the Feeding Hand was one of the notable highlights of the evening, oscillating between wailing electronic textures and skittish jazz rhythms, with a pounding subby kick at its heart. There, many of the artists involved could hear the results of their work for the first time played back on a world-class immersive audio speaker system.Īmong the artists in attendance was Yumé NET, aka Mei Miyazaki Kirby. Selections of this nearly four-hour listening experience were recently demonstrated at L-Acoustics’ Listening Room in Highgate, London. The three-month Immersive London project has now culminated in a 55-track compilation – Immersive London Calling. That latter aspect is something that will be more of a factor in the future.” Welcome to reality Also, and I think this aspect is badly overlooked by a lot of people, immersive gives so much more information: elevation, movement and interactivity. “What immersive audio changes is that it allows you to feel the sound. But, that’s not how waveforms behave in the atmosphere. Any stereo file gives you a heavily compressed block of left/right audio. I think the feeling is the most crucial benefit of immersive audio. “Perceiving and feeling: that’s the difference. We ask Kris what he feels the biggest difference working in this field is. This granted artists without state-of-the-art surround speakers the ability to operate in this realm without forking out for an expensive installation. This replicates not only the surround sensation that you’d experience when playing back the track in a room, but also factors in the qualities of room echo (and the natural distortions that our own ear-shape adds) that all affect the final sound. Sony WalkMix Creator (Image credit: ARK360) WalkMix is also equipped with a virtualiser which can work in tandem with most pairs of studio headphones. Movement and effects modulation can be automated as it would when working in regular stereo. These can be colour-coded and placed around the orb-like space. Taking stems or multi-tracks, WalkMix Creator renders these track elements as small granular objects. In Dolby, you’ve got a kind of dome-type structure, but in 360RA you’ve also got the lower space of the sphere to work with.” While the 360RA output format (Reality Audio) might not be as popular as the increasingly common Dolby Atmos, according to Winter, it offers wider creative scope: “This format differs a little from Dolby Atmos as the mixing area is completely spherical. The team instructed the range of their Academy participants in how to use 360 WalkMix Creator, a spatial audio plugin that can be used with numerous DAWs. Mixing for this bubble-shaped soundstage required tools that would provide the necessary spherical mixing view.
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